Château Beauregard: After Bonaventure
Pierre Bonaventure Barry-Berthomieu married Elisabeth Chassain (born 1765), and they had at least one son, named Pierre-Henri Barry-Berthomieu. He married Jeanne Marie Julie Aricia Lacaze in 1819, and they too had a son, Pierre Elie Barry-Berthomieu, born in 1821. The Beauregard estate was passed down this line, coming to Pierre-Elie when he was a young man. It was Pierre Elie, referred to by many writers simply as Barry-Berthomieu, that was in charge when the fortunes of the estate really started to decline. In part this may have been his own fault as, perhaps spurred on by falling demand for his wine, Pierre Elie began to concentrate instead on the culture of madder, a crop which provided a decent income, and which could be planted on sandy or alluvial soils not suitable for the vine further down the slope.
The root of the madder plant, more correctly known as Rubia tinctorum, was a source of 1-2 dihyrdoxyanthaquinone or alizarin, which is the base of a textile dye named rose madder. As a consequence of its cultivation the vineyard was perhaps neglected, to its detriment and that of the wine naturally, and when the madder market collapsed with the arrival of cochineal imported from Mexico the implications were perhaps obvious.
